Fertilizer not CO2 is responsible for coral bleaching and ocean acidification, from all I see. Intelligent rebuttal wanted. Thanks

Fertilizers and coral bleaching
By Jim Ryan

Fertilizers spewing from the mouth of the Mississippi have created a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Fertilizers are creating the bleaching of the corals, the killing of shellfish and a lot more. The scientists are blaming the oceans problems on co2, but that's a lie.

Just look at the coral reefs around Cuba, that uses almost no fertilizers. No bleaching of their reefs and their reefs still grow the most sensitive corals.

With fertilizers creating the oceans problems, instead of co2 as the scientists, congress and media claim, when climate gate proved they were wrong, as they were getting ready to implement carbon sequestration, which is more bogus crap, all designed to increase taxes and give trillions more to the stock market.

You take everything from laborers, when labor is the only thing that makes wealth and you destroy any life laborers can have.
Congress, Wall Street and the stock market have destroyed laborers. Laborers will also be their downfall.

Can anyone here explain why Cuba, so close to America is not affected?

Mar 23 2013:
Understanding the fertilizer problem of the gulf and Eastern US seaboard requires more than considering applications to farmland. The Eastern river systems pass through our heaviest regions of animal husbandry, and their nitrogenous waste products find their way into our river systems. Even though settling ponds are supposed to control this runoff, they don't, and often flooding dumps unprocessed wastes into the rivers. If we took steps to manage those wastes more efficiently and thoroughly the algal blooms and dead zones would be dramatically reduced.

Farmers want to buy and spread the minimum amount of fertilizer needed to nourish their crops. Animal farmers want to do as little as possible to process and control their animal wastes. We need to widely implement available technologies to turn those wastes into profit centers so that it is in the best interests of those involved in animal husbandry to process those wastes in profitable, environmentally friendly ways. Extracting gasses used to power their farms, and converting waste to fuels by plasma processing technologies such as Magnegas come to mind as examples.

Mar 20 2013:
It is true that fertilizers run off causes serious ecological problems resulting in dead zones, but that is not because it causes the ocean to acidify. When there is too much nitrates and phosphates in the ocean it fertilizes the algae and causes a large algae bloom. Eventually this clouds the water and prevents sunlight from reaching deep into the water, which prevents photosynthesis. The algae beneath the surface begins to consume its stored energy, or decays and is eaten by the local microbes. This process uses the oxygen faster than it can be replenished and the oxygen gets depleted. This prevents all oxygen dependent life from living in the water resulting in a dead zone. Fertilizer does not cause acidification, it causes hypoxia.

CO2, when dissolved in water does make it slightly acidic. If you don't believe me you can do a simple chemistry experiment at home. Take two bottles of water and dissolve equal amounts of baking soda in them. Tightly put a lid on one and leave the other to the open air. Then let them sit for a week. Measure their PH. The one open to the air will slowly get lower in PH as because of exposure to CO2. I admit that is a clumsy experiment, since it does not isolate the CO2. If you could find a source of pure CO2 such as dry ice then you could perform a better experiment.

It is true that fertilizer run off is a huge problem that devastates ecologies and causes dead zones, but scientists are not lying when they say that CO2 is causing ocean acidification. They are separate pressures we put on the ocean from separate causes.

Mar 20 2013:
" if co2 were the cause, all coral beds would be affected equally. They aren't. "

Not necessarily. Why do you believe that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are uniform? Might there not be is more CO2 in a city than in a forest? Predicting CO2 concentrations requires a strong understanding of weather patterns, CO2 producers and CO2 sinks that I honestly don't have. Similarly, the ability of water to dissolve CO2 is not uniform either.

There are people who devote their lives to studying these very topics. Why accuse them of lying?

Mar 21 2013:
The ocean around coral reefs is already saturated with CO2 as the calcium carbonate that the coral is made out of is partially soluble. It forms an equilibrium. Introducing more CO2 just pushes the equilibrium in the opposite direction causing deposition of calcium carbonate. Ocean acidification from dissolved CO2 can only occur in areas where there is little calcium carbonate present. Coral bleaching is a result of increased temperature and is unrelated to pH.

Mar 19 2013:
By the way, with most of the countries using fertilizers not only on agriculture where its needed, so much fertilizers are used on lawns. That is criminal, the environment is showing the stresses and it must keep getting worse, as most of the fertilizers run into the oceans and then the atmosphere takes up that fertilizer and makes acid rain, producing an ever increasing acidic world, that sickens and dies more each day.

The people must stop this, because the gov's of the world show they just don't care.

Even if Australia's river systems did the same, it will take a lot longer for the effects to show up. I would also point out that the Gulf of Mexico is constrained by land mass, compared to Australia. The Gulf stream starts in the gulf ofMexico, where so much of the fertilizer concentrates. Our Gulf Stream carries so much of the fertilizer right next to and across most of America's east coast reefs. Australia is also surrounded by ocean, which will more effectively spread the effects over a much wider area, diluting the effects.

Mar 19 2013:
There's always a new concern about which to read. yes fertilizer is a problem. One would expect CO2 to be one too. Now let's wait for Peter to explain why the Australian coasts are different. I guess I can't quite get Peter's point not having an instant map of Australia in my mind and where the Agriculture is and where the rivers empty. Maybe I'm making it too complicated. Now my mind is stuck on Captain Cook and Captain Bligh. Much has changed since then.

Mar 19 2013:
Sorry should have been clearer. The Great Barrier reef is on the east coast, as is most of the population and agriculture. It suffers from periodic bleaching events as well as algal blooms. The reefs off the west coast such as Ningaloo receive little runoff as there is little rain and minimal population and are in much better condition.

Then as Cuba has no bleaching or acidification, because the Gulf Stream protects Cuba from the fertilizers and Cuba's embargo included fertilizers and your western coast shows so little, bleaching or acidification, co2 makes no sense. Fertilizer makes complete sense, from all we see.

Fertilizers are starting to affect more and more of the oceans, including acid rain, caused by fertilizers.

If co2 were the cause, all reefs should be affected the same, but as all can see, that's simply not true

Comment deleted

Mar 19 2013:
Thanks ZX, but like the proverbial pebble in the pond, I've found that if any consideration has merit and allowed the light of day, it will be passed on fairly quickly and since neither science as a whole nor the media has challenged, its up to the people. Since gov and big business have been claiming global warming and trying to get the carbon tax going, their evidence seems scant to me. Now this ocean acidification and coral bleaching, they say is due to CO2 is just too much, when the effects of fertilizers seems so clear to me. I'm 60 now. As a young man that fished often, I saw how Tampa bay waters at night went from pitch black, to where we could see the fish move, outlined by fluorescent flashes as they moved in the water. We hear of all the damage by acid rain and still the powers that be ignore fertilizers and blame it on something they can tax. By posting here, not only have a few Americans read it, but an Aussie that is interested in such. It seems likely to me, that he will bring this up online in Australia, just as maybe you and someone else here.
Some things written here are incontrovertible and they not only deserve an answer, but maybe a vote, for the right reasons, in the correct manner. All in gov, the media and science are ignoring this catastrophe, for the sake of another tax.
One might think at least one scientist, one government or someone in the media would say, fertilizers have a lot of acids in them, we see the dead zone in the gulf, we have acid rain and now ocean acidification. It seems none of the so called leaders have a brain

Thanks for your help.

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